TVB to Fire Over 100 Employees

With declining ratings in its own dramas, TVB has been increasingly broadcasting Mainland Chinese dramas. TVB’s new emphasis will be to joint-produce dramas with other companies, thus reducing the need for studio filming space. To minimize costs further, Hong Kong’s biggest television station will also be firing over 100 employees across various departments.

An employee at TVB confirmed that the station will shutter studio #16 after filming producer Lau Ka Ho‘s (劉家豪) The Solution Expert <解決師>, which stars Vincent Wong (王浩信) and Natalie Tong (唐詩詠). The studio will then be leased out to other production companies for a fee, along with the use of props and equipment.

As part of the company-wide cost-cutting measures, over 100 employees are expected to be fired next week. Speaking with HK01, a TVB employee confirmed that he had received notice of the company’s intention to cut 10 percent of its staff. The employees being let go include 20 to 30 who work in studio #16, as well as employees in the broadcasting, and international operations departments.

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The writing has been on the wall for a long time already. They already fired 100 staff from their TVBI division several months ago and also disbanded their sports department after 30 years. In addition, TVB’s CEO Mark Lee already made it clear that they won’t be bidding for any special events going forward (ie: Olympics, World Cup, film awards, etc). The latest move is cancelling the Astro Awards and basically pulling out of the Malaysia market altogether. Most likely Singapore is next. Sooner or later, the only market they are going to be in (aside from HK of course) is Mainland China.

@jimmyszeto Haha…yea. I’m actually not sad about TVB cancelling Astro or their other overseas awards shows because quite honestly, all of their awards shows (whether TV or music) in recent years have been Mickey Mouse level, lol (I really wish they would cancel JSG Awards and stop tarnishing the memory of that once great awards show but that’s a whole different topic altogether).

@llwy12 “The latest move is cancelling the Astro Awards and basically pulling out of the Malaysia market altogether.”

That’s a silly move. With no more market left, who will want to watch their shows. They should just close shop and buy shows from other countries, and stop producing their rubbish shows. Nowadays their shows lack quality.

@kk12345 In TVB’s eyes though, it makes sense. Who needs Malaysia, Singapore, and all the other overseas markets when they have the lucrative Mainland China market to tap into? It’s basically a numbers game…there are 1.4 billion people in China and majority of those people watch some form of Chinese programming — TVB’s current top exec is Mainland investor Li Ruigang (supposedly he’s Asia’s equivalent of Rupert Murdoch) who has major connections all across Mainland (including the crucial connections in the Central government) and supposedly he has ambitious plans to convert all those audiences to watching TVB. None of their other overseas markets have a comparable sized market of potential Chinese viewers so it makes sense that they would want to chase the market that would potentially give them the best return on their investment. Plus if we think about it, it’s technically easier for TVB because Mainland audiences aren’t as picky as HK audiences — they can give Mainland audiences crappy series and they will still gobble it up because those audiences view TVB series as different from the same old boring fare they’re used to getting and most importantly, those audiences actually view TVB series as having higher quality than their own series (at least that’s what TVB’s management team thinks based on the comments they’ve made in public supporting their switch to focusing on Mainland market).

@m0m0 TVB has already been slowly switching to Mainland focus even before their official announcement. I’m bad with dates but I think it was 2 years ago (could’ve been further back than that) TVB already showed they didn’t care about preserving Cantonese culture when they started using simplified character subtitles in their newscasts rather than the traditional character subtitles that they’re supposed to use for programs airing in HK (and which they HAD been using for the past few decades)….they received a record-breaking 10,000+ complaints from audiences for that move, which of course wasn’t surprising given it was during a time when the HK/Mainland tension was at its highest.

@llwy12
Now they will have to even more careful when producing series with sensitive or even non sensitive topics. It not just a few complaining HK housewives TVB have to worry about now. It’s all about ensuring they can get series aired minimizing delays and huge chunks censored from mainland TV.

@jimmyszeto Yup, exactly…and judging by the delays in airing Deep in the Realm of Conscience (by 1 week) and Another Era (on hold indefinitely) due to not being able to secure a broadcast slot in Mainland, TVB doesn’t seem to be off to a good start at all….

And yes, as if it isn’t bad enough that when TVB only had the HK market, they already had internal “taboo” topics that their scriptwriters weren’t allowed to touch (i.e. politics and religion), now they will need to expand the list due to all the restrictions in Mainland….oh and it will be interesting to see how they are going to further finagle their already poorly written scripts into some semblance of a story that will get past Mainland censors. I wouldn’t put it past TVB to fill the “1/4 of their series must be co-productions with Mainland” mandate (as per their executive director Mark Lee’s interview with MP Finance back on 7/16) with a plethora of Wong Jing series in the future, as WJ is supposedly the “master” of re-purposing scripts so that they get past Mainland censors [even now, the media still laughs at WJ for being the only director in HK who is able to get multiple films / TV series about gambling “approved” by Mainland censors (keep in mind that gambling-themed movies / series / books, etc. are banned in China) by deleting out all hardcore gambling scenes and “spinning” the movie into something along the lines of “a triad action film that just happens to take place in a casino where the good guys end up kicking the bad guys’ butts and everyone lives happily ever after”….]

@llwy12
Gambling series were so done to death the early 90’s that they need to really put a halt to them now. Any minor controversial subject will cause a delay or even a ban but with the reward being so great TVB will be very willing to cooperate. End of an era a while back anyway. Even if TVB did not shift focus to Mainland, the artists would just use TVB as a stepping stone to build their profile before heading off to the mainland to sing songs or eat lizards on reality shows for millions. HK just can’t compete. Small population compared to the goldmine of mainland China. Only the weak actors who can’t establish their names well enough to be known in China will remain at TVB. Basically the ones currently leading TVB series now….

So TVB management finally responded to all the reports about them firing 10% of their staff (apparently, 10% is the official number they are striving for)…they claim that they are neither firing nor laying off people— rather, they are just “not renewing those employees’ contracts”…Yea, um, last time I checked, those terms all mean the same thing — those employees all no longer have jobs???…but hey, got to give them some credit for trying to be creative with their wording, lol!

I haven’t followed any TVB dramas till its end for many years (except the recent Succession War), since TVB dramas were getting worse from times. But I’ve always hoped it’d come back to the Golden Age. Nah, I’m so naive. I should’ve known that TVB is always aiming to target the Mainland audiences. Now they’re reaching their goal, so why bothers the other small markets?

@bubbles23 Unfortunately, ViuTV’s series are very much still niche series that may appeal to the younger folks but won’t be able to draw in TVB’s traditional housewife audiences. Their series aren’t ones where viewers can just tune out or have it on in the background while they eat dinner. Unlike TVB, a lot of their series are sparse on dialogue so just listening without watching won’t work. One thing I do like about ViuTV is that, unlike TVB, they don’t sign any artists to their station so it gives them more freedom to work with whomever they want. The casts and pairings for their series have been pretty fresh so far and there has been a good mix of veterans and newbies from both the HK television and movie worlds. Behind the scenes same thing — scriptwriters, directors, producers, the collaborations there are fresh too (just one example — one of their best and most critically acclaimed series from last year boasted a completely original script written by one of the most famous playwrights in HK and was directed by one of the most promising young HK movie directors in recent years — both have won multiple awards in their respective fields of theatre and film…this type of quality series is hard to come by in HK). Most importantly though, ViuTV is not afraid to explore all different types of themes and so far, have managed to make their series relevant to the times and to the issues people care about in society.

I m from Thailand . I have followed series TVB long time but now I am 34 years old . I feel very sad.็๋็้ HK is apart of Mainland China so it can’t make anything. Hongkong was free capital economic before apart of England. After change is apart Mainland China was monopoly market 2000++ . TVB was monopoly business for 2012 . I am suppose Sir Run Run Shaw was foreknowledge HK television market was buying China capital. I don’t like China and I never see movie from China.

@ning “HK is apart of Mainland China so it can’t make anything. Hongkong was free capital economic before apart of England.”

– Wrong. HK studios can make anything. They’re just following the money trail, like in any free economy. China is where the money is, so that’s where they’re concentrating their efforts on. Makes sense. If HK shows/movies were huge money-makers in Thailand, Bangladesh or Rwanda, then guess where the studios would be heading?

@ning I’m not sure that I’m understanding your comment correctly but as @pocky said, TVB is essentially doing what makes the most sense for them, which is to chase the Mainland market and give up on the markets that are not benefiting them financially (and have no potential of benefitting them in the future). It technically has nothing to do with whether HK is under British or Chinese rule (though yes, the overall tension in HK has been higher since the handover). The HK movie industry already switched to focusing on the Mainland market 2 decades ago (HK music industry as well) and now its TVB’s turn. As much as many of us prefer Cantonese and HK culture to be preserved, I think majority of us deep down have known that this move would come sooner or later…

I don’t really understand the comment about Run Run Shaw — he’s been dead for awhile already and even before he sold the station to Charles Chan, he already wasn’t personally involved with TVB anymore (he hadn’t really been involved anymore since like the late 90s). And TVB has actually always been a monopoly ever since the 1970s, it’s just that over the years, when ATV still existed, they would occasionally make the effort to challenge TVB, but it was always short-lived. The reason why HK didn’t make the move to China sooner was because China didn’t really open up its entertainment industry to the world until the mid-90s and even then for those who took the chance to enter the Mainland market, it was an experimental move….over the years, the Mainland market has continued to evolve to the point that their entertainment industry is now the second largest in the world (and the prediction from almost every industry expert is that they will surpass Hollywood in the near future). Speaking of Hollywood, even they’ve been clamoring for a piece of the Mainland market the past couple years (just one example — nowadays, Hollywood studios use box office sales in China to measure how well their movies do globally) —when you have the biggest entertainment industry in the world even setting their sights toward Mainland, it’s no surprise that the tiny (in comparisons) HK entertainment industry would do the same thing.

I cannot finish a TVB drama nowadays. TVB dramas have been going downhill since the year 2003. TVB should advance the education of their actors/actresses by providing them continuing education/acting college-level courses. If you look at all the actors/actresses in Korea/Mainland China, almost all of them have some sort of acting degree. Instead of looking for real talent, they just look into their pool of potential actresses from the Miss Hong Kong Pageant. The filming quality for TVB is also very boring. I feel that they are more concerned about capturing the drama set/display (especially when it comes to ancient dramas) than the emotions/acting of actors/actresses in different angles.

“I cannot finish a TVB drama nowadays. TVB dramas have been going downhill since the year 2003.”

My feeling exactly, Many argue that TVB has gone downhill in recent years. For me, it was roughly around this period when there was a mass exodus of quality front-line actors and back-end staff (producers, scriptwriters, directors, etc.). The poor quality of drama series showed starting this period and has gotten worse as it progressed. That was also when I stopped watching TVB series from beginning to end.

Presently I don’t even bother starting 90% of their dramas unless I see a veteran actor(s) that I want to see. Even then, I can only focus on that actor’s performance. If I have any hope that the plot would be decent, I would be sorely disappointed as TVB plots always suck.

@anon For me, it actually started going downhill already back in the late 1990s – the main saving grace was that many of the quality actors and actresses who came up in the late 80s/early 90s period were still there and so TVB was still able to attract a good audience pool (IMO, if you take apart some of the big series from the late 90s era, you’ll find that a lot of the scripts for those series really weren’t that good – especially all the sequels to all those franchises, some of which bordered on atrocious, even back then – but the casts were good and the shortcomings in the scripts were able to be made up in the acting, for the most part. Unfortunately, most of those artists left in the early 2000s, plus that was around the time TVB had its massive management shift (technically, Run Run Shaw officially turning over TVB’s reigns to Mona Fong in the early 2000s was really what did them in….) – both of which exacerbated TVB’s downward spiral….in all honesty, most of the nails are in the coffin already — it’s only a matter of time before TVB follows in ATV’s footsteps (though hopefully they don’t get to the point of being the embarrassing disgrace that ATV was….I mean, when even the employees who work for you prefer that you fold up shop and they would rather take their chances with losing their jobs than work for you in any capacity, you know you’ve got truly serious issues!).